Re: [Axiom-developer] Axiom bibliography

[Bob McElrath]

C Y address@hidden wrote:
> I take it we aren't going to worry too much about a particular paper
> being "on topic?"  I guess in Axiom's case it would be hard to say with
> certainty any particular paper couldn't be relevant.

That's a job we have to leave to the author of the page. ;)

> I'm intrigued by the idea of a DOI number - something like that could
> potentially be quite useful - but do arXiv papers, for example, have
> DOI numbers assigned?  Also, I think DOI numbers might be inconvenient
> and unintuitive for a \cite{} entry - I guess the best thing to do is
> record a DOI number in the bibtex file if it exists, but don't use it
> for the identity tag.

It seems *finding* doi's is hard and not-free:
    http://www.crossref.org/01company/pr/press021406.htm
(or, not-available-yet).  I seem to run into them a lot through the APS
Journals though.

As far as I know, arXiv papers do not have DOI identifiers until they
appear in a journal (at which point the same paper exists in many
databases -- journal, arXiv, SPIRES, etc).

As far as DOI being inconveninent and unintuitive -- all "unique
identifiers" are inconveninent and unintuitive.  My philosophy is that
it doesn't matter what kind of line noise the user has to cut/paste as
an ID, as long as it is short (<~ 15 characters) and the user can FIND
what he should type from something intuitive like the author's name.
(This is done via external search engines)

> Maybe we should establish a pattern for choosing the tag for a paper. 
> Something like the following:
> 
> 1.  If available, use the tag from arXiv, ADS, or other database since
> this will match others using those databases.  In the case of
> duplication of a paper in differrent databases, we will need to
> establish a priority.  I'm not familiar with all the options - can
> someone suggest a logical a->b->c search priority for the various
> databases out there?  Alternatively, we might use OAI conformance or
> some other such criteria.

Since bibtex entries can have any data at all, it should have multiple
entries if it is in multiple databases:
    doi = "10.1103/PhysRevLett.75.3969",
    eprint    = "hep-ph/0506151",
    url = "http://stacks.iop.org/0370-1328/73/912";,
    adsbibcode = "1995Sci...269..198A",
    SLACcitation = "%%CITATION = PRPLC,117,75;%%",
    SPIRESbibcode = "McElrath:2005bp"
just to name a few.  Then the user can use \cite{hep-ph/0506151} or
\cite{1995Sci...269..198A} or \cite{10.1103/PhysRevLett.75.3969} and
they should all find the same article.  (Note the above examples do not
all refer to the same paper)

Then of course we have to worry about merging entries that were
retrieved from different sources, but refer to the same paper.

> 2.  If that the paper does not exist in any archive, we must have some
> rule for creating a tag name that makes sense.  This will take a little
> thought.  CiteSeer seems to like the work done by these folks:  Open
> Archives Initiative http://www.openarchives.org/  I would suggest we
> adopt whatever open conventions have been developed - maybe even create
> a "Bibliography Howto" for inclusion in Axiom?  Also, if the OAI is
> doing quality work that is relevant to our needs we can define priority
> for database searches based on an archive's use of OAI-PMH standards -
> check the OAI compliant databases first, then check other ones.

I'd just generate something random.  local:4748224 or some such.  who
cares what that string is?  You always have to do a search for the paper
anyway since no one memorizes things even as simple as "McElrath:2005bp"
anyway.

--
Cheers,
Bob McElrath [Univ. of California at Davis, Department of Physics]

    "It is almost universally felt that when we call a country
    democratic we are praising it; consequently, the defenders of every
    kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they
    might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one
    meaning." -- George Orwell

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